Turkey: Debasing the free press?

We explore the deteriorating state of press freedom in the run-up and wake of the country's parliamentary elections.

The politics of fear was effective and that was reflected in the election results. The media in Turkey performed very poorly in the face of this test. News was reported in a one-sided manner.

Ceren Sozeri, associate professor, Galatasaray University

Turks have cast their votes for the second time this year and the AK party has surged back into power.

Amid a military campaign grappling with Kurdish fighters in the southeast and the armed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group, critics of the AK party have accused President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of drowning out opposition voices and trying to control the media message.

Erdogan insists his country's media is the freest in the world. However, a series of high-profile raids into Turkish media groups opposing the government has seen some of the biggest media crackdowns in the country's history.

The election results have put the AK party back in power with 49 percent of the vote. So what does that mean for journalism and media freedom in Turkey?

Talking us through the story are: Nazli Ilicak, a journalist at the Bugun newspaper, Cem Kucuk, a columnist at the Star newspaper; Ceren Sozeri, an associate professor at Galatasaray University; and Nuray Mert, a columnist for the leading Turkish newspaper Hurriyet Daily News.